Stats overhaul beta

Baldy · January 4, 2010

Want to test drive stats, extreme makeover edition? Just point your browsers to http://www.smugmug.com/homepage/newstats.mg .

EDIT: Now there's a link to the beta in your control panel, stats tab :clap

You should see a page for your stats that defaults to something like this:

It's a public beta so we'd love to get feedback in this thread or via email with "Stats feedback" somewhere in the subject line.

What do you love, hate, are indifferent about? What would make it better?

Of course we have our normal disclaimers like, you may want a feature really badly and we may really want to give it to you, but we might not be able for this upcoming release.

We don't have a release date in mind. We'll decide on one after we hear what you think!

All the best,
Baldy

denisegoldberg · January 4, 2010

Hey Baldy -
Thanks for asking for feedback.

First, it's definitely an improvement over the current stats presentation. But of course (as usual) there are things that I'd like to see changed.

The popularity tab probably needs a new name. When I first saw "popularity" all I could think of was popular photos, and that's not what it is. Popular galleries maybe, not popularity.

The popularity tab shows only the gallery name. It should also show the category and subcategory names. I'd like to be able to see all galleries on that tab, or to select a subset of galleries (by a category or subcategory).

The Gallery Trends, Gallery Details, and Photo Trends tabs all require the selection of a gallery. If I have already selected a gallery on the previous tab that I am viewing, I'd like that to be automatically carried forward to the next tab. Why should I need to select the gallery 3 times to look at the stats for a single gallery?

The photos on the gallery details tab seem to be showing in random order. When I look at one of my smaller galleries - the photos are not in date order, they are not in name order, and they are not in order by any of the stats columns. I can nicely sort by one of the stats columns. I can also ask for a sort by file. Maybe that column shouldn't be offered as a sort column.

When you show a photo thumb, please also show the file name.

On the Popularity tab, please show the gallery name when the view is drilled down to the photo level.

I suspect I'll have more to add as I continue to look and play, but that's a start for now.

--- Denise

leftquark · January 4, 2010

Just wanted to mention that the new stats page is a HUGE improvement from what is there now. I made a post last week with some suggestions and you guys were already working on most of them! Nicely done, and thanks! Just a few comments:

1) Like previously mentioned, in addition to the most popular galleries, I also want to be able to see my most popular photos.

2) It would be nice when I'm looking at "Photo Trends" or "Gallery Details" tabs to be able to see the total (forever) information about a photo or gallery. Yes I can choose a date range, but it is currently somewhat cumbersome to have to keep clicking a million months backwards if it's an old photo. Maybe make it easier to switch month/year and then that would solve the problem?

3) I assume you have a way of tracking where the views are coming from? I'm curious because a lot of my galleries that are really old show hits each month. I'm fairly certain a real person isn't looking at these and I'm curious if those hits are search-engine spiders. It would be nice if you could show us where the hits are coming from!

4) I'm not sure if this would make a better UI, but since I've chosen to display my homepage by "Galleries" (and not by categories) I found it difficult to find some of my galleries using the pull-down menu system that you have now (I can't remember which category/sub-category I stuck a gallery, but I do remember how I have my galleries arrange (chronologically)). It would be nice if the list of galleries was sorted in the same way that you've set your homepage (either gallery or category).

5) I might like to see some stats on comments: which photos are most commented on, when they got comments? I dunno, maybe this isn't that important.

6) On the "Total Views" tab it would be neat if you could click on a day and see the breakdown of what photos were viewed that day. I see that I got <x> hits on a day and I'm curious what people are looking at.

Otherwise, looks good! Thanks!

scwalter · January 4, 2010

Looks good, but needs a bit of polishing to be great.

Here's some ideas after spending a few minutes poking around.

1. "Displaying from" In addition to the cool date picker, it should have some pre-defined options, perhaps in a drop-down for: this week, last week, this month, last month, last 6 months, last year, etc.

2. "Gallery Trends", "Gallery Details" and "Photo Trends" There should be only one gallery picker for the whole thing, or if I change the gallery on one tab, it should automagically change in the other. I have many galleries and it's challenging to find the one I want.

3. "Photo Trends" Picking a new picture requires selecting the gallery again, which is painful. How about left/right arrow to go through a gallery.

4. Layout. Move the "displaying from" up onto the title line (where it says statistics) to give me more screen space.

5. Bug Under "gallery trends", if I repeatedly pick some options, they are added to the graph again and again, so I eventually wind up with 7+ traces and associated legends at the top.

6. I'd like to be able to pick an end date in the future, for example to compare a previous month to the current month with the same scale.

7. How about highlighting Saturday and Sunday with a colored vertical band on the graphs, just to give sense of scale and also to see if weekends are busier.

8. For really long periods, how about alternating colors for months, again to give a sense of scale.

Thanks for sharing the beta...

-Scott

sib · January 4, 2010

One suggestion

Baldy wrote:

Want to test drive stats, extreme makeover edition? Just point your browsers to http://www.smugmug.com/homepage/newstats.mg . You should see a page for your stats that defaults to something like this:

It's a public beta so we'd love to get feedback in this thread or via email with "Stats feedback" somewhere in the subject line.

What do you love, hate, are indifferent about? What would make it better?

Hey, looks like some great changes!

One tweak: on the Total Views tab, it would be great to be able to click a data point and get a drill-down of the stats for that day directly, like this:

jfriend · January 4, 2010

It's nice to see stats moving forward. There's some very nice functionality here. After playing around for a short while, here are a few comments:

I'd really like to be able to select a category or sub-category rather than just a gallery. When a sub-category represents an event (like a soccer season or a theatrical production or a particular vacation, what I often want to see is the overall stats for that event and I can't see that when all I have is the ability to view a single gallery trend. This is an overall piece of feedback on Smugmug admin that nearly anywhere you present a gallery picker, let us also pick a category or sub-category. This is particularly missing in the new multi-gallery settings UI. We need to be able to apply settings by category or sub-category there too.
I'd really like it to remember my selected gallery when I go from tab to tab (if appropriate). If you're viewing a deeply nested gallery, it's cumbersome to keep having to pick it over and over again just to see different views of the same gallery.
A question I want stats to answer for me is "what in my site is getting the majority of hits in the last week or last month or last day"? When one has 1000 galleries, I don't see how I can get that question answered in the new stats page? There are probably lots of different ways to get me that answer, but I'm imagining a bar chart sorted with highest hit galleries at the left with a bar for each gallery and showing only as many as fit on the screen (I don't need to see the long tail of low-hit galleries). Also, offer the ability to see it by gallery, by category or by sub-category. This would give me a great summary or what events on my site are getting hits? I now see that the popularity tab gives me this view by gallery by number (bar chart graphical would be easier to process), but I'd like it by category or sub-category too.
Having a permalink for a given stats view is great! We can bookmark things we want to look at regularly and get to them much quicker.
Gallery Details should default to sorting by Total Views.
I can imagine wanting to see the image filename in the Gallery Details view because if you're trying to match some stats with an actual image and several images look similar, there is currently no way to identify exactly which image is which.
When you're in Photo Trends and you'd like to pick a different photo in the same gallery, it ought to be easier than having to select the gallery all over again. When not a "select different photo" button or something like that?
In the popularity tab, it lists only gallery names. As I have many galleries named "Highlights" and "Landscapes", there's no easy way for me to tell which gallery is which in the list? You have lots of horizontal space to indicate the hierarchy that the gallery is contained in.
I'd like to be able to set a default date range that is always active when I first come to stats. For me, it would probably be the last week. It would also be nice to have shortcuts for last week, last month, last year without having to manually pick month/day/year for both starts and finish.
It won't let me pick a start date earlier than Dec. 1, 2009. If that can't be fixed (because you don't have the data), please offer some UI feedback so we don't just think the date picker is busted.
Is there any way to tell how many hits are direct links and how many are images viewed in a gallery page? I have a fair amount of direct linked images in various forums and I think about those hits very differently from the hits due to people coming to view my actual gallery pages. I'd like to know which is which.

mbrady · January 4, 2010

In the places where you can pick the gallery from a drop-down list, the width of the gallery list is not wide enough. I have some galleries with very similar names and with the end cut off, I can't tell them apart.

For example, I have some galleries named like this:
Disneyland - February 2007
Disneyland - February 2008
Disneyland - November 1997
Disneyland - November 1998

But in the drop-down list, they get cut off, and I only see:
Disneyland - February 20...
Disneyland - February 20...
Disneyland - November 19...
Disneyland - November 19...

And even after you select one, there's no place on the screen that shows the full name of the gallery.

BradfordBenn · January 4, 2010

I would like to be able to see what albums are popular under a category. For example in my Category Travel there are three albums, I would like to be able to see side by side which album is most popular.

It would also be nice to be able to export the data.

I will go back to do more testing later.

Baldy · January 4, 2010

Wow, really great, well-thought-out feedback in a short time. Many thanks!

We're watching this thread really closely and going over it with the team to figure out what we can get in this release versus a future one.

drsPIX · January 4, 2010

Stats - need drill-down
I'd like to be able to drill-down to a spike on the TOTAL Views tab to see what generated anomalies.

The only other tab of value to me is the POPULARITY tab; I want to see what is generating interest... the other tabs would be better IF the stats rolled UP into the higher catagories, instead of being limited to the furthest leaf (gallery).

OH! And add the ability to EXPORT to a spreadsheet or CSV so I can calculate my own stats!

Thanks for continuing to add features.

Duane Stevens
drsPIX.com
Twitter: @drsPIX

lalartu · January 4, 2010

Looks like a great start

I find the date picker cumbersome
I highly appreciate that start/end pick can be reversed
I would appreciate Larger jumps and today link
I have always liked the Google Finance viewer selection
I am also fond of the MIT Simile project in particular TimePlot may be applicable
I think think that on larger time scales using rollup or collapsed data would be helpful
More than 2 Months collapse to expandable weeks
More than 6 12 weeks collapse to expandable months
I find the lack of navigation controls to be cumbersome. It is difficult to view stats for multiple photos
From PhotoTrends (for example) I cannot click on PhotoTrends again to get back to the selection page
I think that Popularity would be better with a time scale as well as a total and most anywhere a number is displayed as a representation of data over time in particular please see the discussion on Sparklines and existing PHP Implementation
Somehow I am getting stats from www.smugmug.com, this causes permalinks to fail and redirect to www.smugmug.com
(fails) http://www.smugmug.com/homepage/newstats.mg?UserID=2134&min=1260000001&max=1262592001&stat=0
(works) http://lalartu.smugmug.com/homepage/newstats.mg?UserID=2134&min=1260000001&max=1262592001&stat=0
Sometimes the selection box jumps away requiring fast mouse motion to catch before the selection closes (Chrome 4.0.249.43)

timk519 · January 4, 2010

Baldy wrote:

Wow, really great, well-thought-out feedback in a short time. Many thanks!

You really shouldn't sound so surprised...

Baldy wrote:

We're watching this thread really closely and going over it with the team to figure out what we can get in this release versus a future one.

I haven't had a chance to look at this very closely, but I'll echo other comments about being able to do things by category & subcategory everywhere in the SM system. Having to do everything at the gallery-level over and over and over again is a real PITA.

Oscarc · January 4, 2010

It would be very helpful to get visit counts in addition to views, and, if possible, count each photo viewed only once per session. Right now it's impossible to tell if one visitor viewed a hundred photos or if a hundred visitors viewed one photo each or if one visitor viewed fifty photos twice each.

I also want to second the request made earlier to be able to view by category and subcategory instead of just by gallery. I frequently post photos for an event in multiple galleries in a subcategory, and it would be nice to get stats for the event as a whole.

One other thing that would be very helpful, especially for SEO and social networking, is a list of referring pages and search engine keywords for each gallery, and the number of visits from each. For example:

Gallery XYZ
Referring sites:
livejournal.com: 10
facebook.com: 50
google.com: 12
oscarc.net: 25

Search keywords:
"anime": 25
"fanime con": 150
"naruto cosplay": 5

BigAl · January 4, 2010

I like the idea, but hate flash...

Andy · January 4, 2010

BigAl wrote:

I like the idea, but hate flash...

I'm really sorry about that, Al - and truly wish we had the sorcery, testing and other resources to make it work for you without flash also. I'm really sorry.

BradfordBenn · January 4, 2010

During testing, how far back should be be able to see? I was not able to use the calendar features to select anything other than the defaults.

TalkieT · January 5, 2010

One absolutely critical issue...
We need a way to exclude certain galleries from ALL stats... I just found that my second most popualr gallery was responsible for over 1/3 of all my views... However that gallery is my "website GFX" gallery with all the page elements like backgrounds, corners of boxes, overlays etc that are presented several times for every page loaded.

Not being able to exclude these utterly pollutes the stats for me and makes them worse that useless.

Regards
Neil Gardner
www.nzsnaps.com

jfriend · January 5, 2010

TalkieT wrote:

We need a way to exclude certain galleries from ALL stats... I just found that my second most popualr gallery was responsible for over 1/3 of all my views... However that gallery is my "website GFX" gallery with all the page elements like backgrounds, corners of boxes, overlays etc that are presented several times for every page loaded.

Not being able to exclude these utterly pollutes the stats for me and makes them worse that useless.

Regards
Neil Gardner
www.nzsnaps.com

I have the same issue with a couple galleries that contain externally linked images in high traffic forum postings. I want to separate these out from the people that actually come to my site.

richpepp · January 5, 2010

The 'Popularity' page doesn't appear to handle international characters in gallery names

loving it so far

Rich

beetle8 · January 5, 2010

It's kinda clunky,
As it stands the old stats would be better for me rather than having to select a gallery, than go back and select another and so-on I could get a visual by scrolling down. Conveniently for me, and probably others like me, the newest gallery/gallery with most recent addition was listed on top. While I would have preferred to filter by category and sub-category.

I have hundreds and hundreds of galleries, as I'm sure many do, getting usable data with this new system is very cumbersome.

I like the above mentioned ideas about drill down. If I could click on a peak and have it give me more detailed info about the images/galleries/sub-categories/categories that contributed to that total,

Thanks for continuing to work on this, stats are very valuable

ETA- I hadn't clicked on the popularity tab when I wrote the above, I like this feature

ETA again - gallery details and photo trends could be combined, have the image in gallery details clickable to take you to the trends.
It's far too cumbersome to have to continually navigate through these drop downs,

timk519 · January 5, 2010

Looking at the gallery picker, it'd be helpful to have a "total views" listed in the picker itself so one doesn't drill down into a cat/subcat/gallery only to find that there wasn't any significant traffic there to speak of.
Need a way to filter at all three levels - some galleries have images with lots of views while others have few or none. I want to be able to filter the results at all three levels so I only see what I think is interesting.
Popularity listing is a huge improvement over existing stats, but it's listings need the cat/subcat names prepended to the gallery names, and the galleries with the same number of view counts reported in alphabetical order.

Richard · January 5, 2010

I just took a quick glance and will probably have more to say later, but 1) overall it looks very nice and 2) in the detail views, it would be better if there were no columns for sizes that are not permitted in the gallery.

dwterry · January 5, 2010

With nearly 1400 galleries, the new view into stats one gallery at a time is almost worthless to me. So I just want to add my support for the other votes for category and subcategory views.

ColoradoSkier · January 5, 2010

I love it, way more useful than the current system. Would love it more if I wasn't forced to drill down into galleries.

b7j0c · January 5, 2010

hi and intros
Hi everyone. I'm Brad Clawsie (brad@smugmug.com), I am the developer working on these stats.

There is a lot of great feedback so far and I can assure you that a lot of it is going to start going into the beta asap. I'm going to try to group changes together, so you may see one of your suggestions languish for a bit while I get it bundled with other suggestions.

Just a few quick notes based on what I have seen so far:

- I also dislike flash. I took a long look at standards-based charting tools when planning this project and they just weren't quite there yet. I'm keeping my eye on a few toolkits and will definitely re-evaluate this situation as time becomes available and more smugmuggers migrate to newer browsers that can support in-browser charting.

- Lots of people have issues with the gallery picker pulldown. I hear you!

- Lots of people brought up issues for large datasets (lots of galleries etc). I hear you!

- We are implementing a new stats collection architecture at the same time we are rolling out this new front-end. The cutoff start date coincides with the date this architecture has good data in our database. Statistics for referrers is still being polished, and once that happens, the referrers tab which is now hidden will appear.

thanks
Brad

Baldy · January 5, 2010

b7j0c wrote:

Hi everyone. I'm Brad Clawsie

He's this Brad Clawsie:

Employee #83, group of first dozen engineers to bootstrap yahoo.com.
Sole initial engineer for Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/, 1996-2000), providing all site coding and operations, as well as support for news at other Yahoo! services around the world. Yahoo! News became the #1 news source in the world during my tenure developing the product with no meaningful downtime.

Erick L · January 5, 2010

I'd like to see the whole path, at least the categories and sub-cat in the popularity field. I have several galleries with the same name and the only way to tell them apart is the categories and sub-cat or by clicking on them. That stat only uses a thin column so there's plenty of room to include the path.

kefkafloyd · January 5, 2010

It would be really nice if we could get referrer information for each photo (e.g. where links to it are being clicked and where websites are pulling it from). Airliners.net does it for me for all of my photos on there, it's basic HTTP information, it should be doable.

Andy · January 5, 2010

kefkafloyd wrote:

It would be really nice if we could get referrer information for each photo (e.g. where links to it are being clicked and where websites are pulling it from). Airliners.net does it for me for all of my photos on there, it's basic HTTP information, it should be doable.

Planned!

mcgil · January 5, 2010

Thank you for posting Brad's mug and info, it's great to put a face on a name. I love the new stats... sure it's not yet ideal with a large dataset, but it's already such a huge improvement... and it's great to hear that Brad will improve them. Thank you !

Baldy · January 5, 2010

mcgil wrote:

Thank you for posting Brad's mug and info, it's great to put a face on a name. I love the new stats... sure it's not yet ideal with a large dataset, but it's already such a huge improvement... and it's great to hear that Brad will improve them. Thank you !

Whenever I piss and moan about the scale of SmugMug and how enormous the data set is for referrers and how much ooomph this is taking on the back end, Brad reminds me of Yahoo's scale and I shut up.

Stats overhaul beta

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